


trick of the light

by Rethira



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-26
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-19 14:56:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/pseuds/Rethira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's familiar and you don't know why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	trick of the light

He doesn’t come to the library often. There aren’t many who do; Hiyoko-san only comes up as often as she does because she can, by some miracle, see you. It’s why you haven’t told her yet. You couldn’t bear it if she abandoned you. You couldn’t bear it if someone else left you. You can’t even remember why, but the very idea fills you with dread.

They always leave you.

He’s a teacher as far as you can tell. You don’t imagine he’s a very good one; he falls asleep over his books, and he tends to wander as if he’s in a daze. You wonder sometimes if you knew him when you were alive. Every so often he’ll move just so and you’ll be hit by a wave of recognition. Sometimes it’s so strong you can almost remember the name, but you never quite get there. It flutters out of reach like one of his feathers – they’re curious things, his feathers. If you look very closely the very tip of the quill is black, not clear like it should be.

The students call him Nanaki-sensei, or Nanaki Kazuaki and you can’t imagine they’re calling him by the wrong name but even so. That’s not the name that sits on the tip of your tongue, not the name that lingers just out of reach in your memory. You think you had it once, when you were newly a ghost and you could still see ash from the library windows, but it was gone before you could think about it. It wasn’t important then anyway. Nanaki-sensei only started to teach a few years ago, and you’d died long before then. Even if you could remember the name he reminds you of, you’d have had no use to it until recently.

One day he drops a photograph while he’s sleeping. It’s covered in black scribbles and you flinch away from it when you get too close, but you don’t know why. He picks it up when he wakes, and uses his wings to smooth out the creases. He frowns slowly while he stares at it, and then he ducks his head and tucks it away in his scarf. You never see it again, and you don’t want to.

One day, near the end of summer, he sits in front of a window and the shadows make his feathers look black. He turns his head, and his beak in profile is so achingly familiar – you remember flames licking higher and higher and sobbing and _you have to do this you must there isn’t another choice Hitori_ – but then he moves and it is gone.

When he stands to leave, you can see another shadow behind him, one that flickers and shudders. No-one else seems able to see it, not even Hiyoko-san when she walks past him.

You write it off as a trick of the light and you never see it again.


End file.
